A good dentist is, in my experience, hard to find. A few years ago I had a great one in downtown Seattle, a woman in her 50s whose entire office was run by women, a dental service Matriarchy. Patients loved coming there, and they would often show up early to sit in the waiting room and bask in the office’s warm vibes.
During one of my visits, as I sat with the other patients waiting for our turn, I started chatting with a woman in her 70s who was knitting a gorgeous purple scarf. Her eyes never once left her stitches as we talked, and I could tell that she was quite nervous. During our conversation she mentioned that she’d had to keep the scarf away from her 5-year-old grandson, who was currently visiting her at her home. They had spent the afternoon making peanut butter with a high-speed blender, using fresh, unshelled peanuts that she’d bought at the farmer’s market. They’d had to shell the nuts before throwing them into the contraption. They snacked on the peanuts as they worked, and the woman had used her teeth to open the peanut shells, causing a crack in one of her crowns.
Instead of just a simple tooth cleaning she would have to have some repair work done on the tooth with the broken crown. She told me her toothache was terrible, but she didn’t like “being under” the anesthetic that the dentist used, so she was dreading the process.
Just then I was called into the back rooms for my cleaning. Once I was situated in the chair the hygienist did the job, then told me to wait for the dentist to come and review the state of my mouth.
In the room next door I could hear the dentist talking with the knitting woman. The knitter was explaining her situation, retelling the story of the unfortunate peanut incident:
“I was eating peanuts with my grandson and I cracked my teeth on them.”
The dentist replied, “Well if your teeth are suddenly cracking on a peanut, we might have a lot of work in front of us.”
The woman attempted to explain again: “I don’t usually eat peanuts but they were fresh and I was hungry.”
The dentist replied, “In any case, raw peanuts are soft and shouldn’t cause any problems to your teeth. We’d better get to work!”
The woman sighed in resignation as the dentist fired up the anesthetic machine.
Do you see the problem?
There was a crucial detail missing from this conversation, one that directly impacted the way that the dentist viewed the woman’s situation. Each of them had an image of the peanut in question, but the images didn’t match. The dentist was working with imprecise information, which could have been easily corrected if she had bothered to ask her patient for more specifics. The woman could have also bridged the communication gap by mentioning that she’d cracked her crown on the hard peanut shell, not the soft nut.
I remind all my clients never to assume that someone can read your mind about important details in any part of your professional communication. It’s part of your job to speak, email, text and Slack with clarity and precision. You can even say or write, “For the sake of clarity, I want to point out that…”. Make it easy for the person you’re communicating with to understand your meaning. You’ll become known as a trouble-shooter who cares about details and is valuable on any team, project or decision.
On the other hand, it’s also important for you to ask precise questions of others, so that you can have all the relevant information to work with. When you’re having a conversation with someone about an important issue, let them talk for a while about it, then ask them, “Are there any other details that stand out to you, or that you feel could be relevant to the issue?”. You’ll be surprised what people will offer if given the chance! Knowing these extras can help you gain a significant advantage as you go forward in your process. EMAIL ME for questions about all my Power Voice for Career Women private packages and group workplace trainings.